On May 5th, I graduated college with two bachelor degrees. On May 3rd, I flew from Utah to South Carolina to interview with a cutting edge Internet marketing company. That is correct, I was flying out for a job interview before I even graduated to possibly land my dream job. The company headquarters are still in construction, but, will have a full sized basketball court, a yoga room, weight room, two soccer fields, two volleyball courts, company subsidized lunch, a roof garden, and many other sweet amenities.

One of the reasons why this company interviewed me was because I got a little creative in marketing myself. Remember, they are a cutting edge technology company and I really wanted to interview with them. I first created a resume website where I wrote a cover letter, linked to my resume, and listed my contact information. If this step seems daunting to you, I recommend learning how to use WordPress. Seriously, in this day and age, you need to know how to quickly setup your own website.

After I created my resume website, I crafted a Google PPC ad that would show on Google’s search results when searching for the company’s name. If you don’t know much about using PPC ads, you should read this thorough beginner’s guide. One of Google’s priorities is to keep search ads relevant to the search term. They give PPC ads different quality scores. The better the quality score, the cheaper it will be per click. I wrote many different ad copies, but, here is the ad copy I ended up using the most:

“X” Company: Hire Me

I have the creativity, experience, and drive that “X” company needs.

HireMatthewSchmoldt.com

Google approves all advertisements before they appear in their search results. The approval process happens fairly quickly and in my experience took an hour or two. Google has an ad preview tool which will let you know if your advertisement is showing up for certain keywords. Once I saw that my ad was live and appearing, I then sent an email to the company.

The email I sent was my cover letter as the body of the message with my resume attached. In my cover letter, I made sure I notified the company of the Google PPC ad that I had setup. An example of how I notified them of the Google PPC ad is as follows: “I am an entrepreneur with the creativity, education, drive, experience, ambition, and values that you seek. To demonstrate my sincerity, I have started an Adwords promotional campaign targeting the search phrase, ‘X Company.’”

Within 24 hours, I was contacted by the company that I had targeted. In the first email, I was asked to schedule a phone interview. An hour after receiving the first email, I was sent the following message:

The first phone interview was a pretty typical ‘getting to know you’ type conversation. The rest of the interviews, including an in-person 8 hour interview session, were very intense and extremely math focused. I was unprepared for the mental math questions that I was asked to calculate and answer on the spot. Ultimately, I was not offered the position because I was not analytical enough.

After seeing how effective my PPC ad was, I targeted other companies. In total, I have targeted five companies using PPC ads. Forty percent of the companies that I have targeted, I have interviewed with. The sample size is small, yet, the results are strong. I suggest thinking about experimenting with PPC ads for your job hunt. But, be warned, not all companies appreciate having their company name being targeted using PPC ads. One out of the five companies sent me the following email:

Matthew Schmoldt is an Internet entrepreneur. In March 2013, he launched OhTheThingsYouCanBuy, a Dr. Seuss-like adventure into the cool/neat/amazing things that you can buy online. He likes being creative and doing things differently than others.

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treptalks

Interesting! Definitely worth a try! Yes you have to keep in mind the Trademark violations or can find yourself in trouble.

If you know that you really want to work for a certain company (like it is your dream job) and you know what you can contribute then I would even suggest picking up the phone and giving the CEO/Founder a call and letting them know how you can help. This may be a little difficult in big corporations because then you are dealing with recruiters.

At the end of the day it is really about “How much value you can provide?”. If you can convey THAT to a company and you can be creative about THAT then it is even better.